The Quote Mine Project

Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote
Mines

"Miscellaneous"

Quote #57

"There are only two possibilities as to how life arose.
One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the
other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no
third possibility. Spontaneous generation, that life arose
from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120
years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with
the only possible conclusion that life arose as a
supernatural creative act of God. I will not accept that
philosophically because I do not want to believe in God.
Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is
scientifically impossible; spontaneous generation arising
to evolution." (Wald, George, "Innovation and Biology,"
Scientific American, Vol. 199, Sept. 1958, p.
100)

The poster (or whoever he cribbed it from - one of the
dangers of plagiarism is that someone else's mistakes
transform into your mistakes without warning) got the
reference wrong. If he had photocopies of the paper, that
would not have happened. The correct citation is:

Wald, G. 1954. The Origin of Life. Scientific
American August: 44-53.

- C. Thompson

I went to the library and found the [September 1958]
article. The quote is a complete fabrication. What the
article does say is:

The great idea emerges originally in the consciousness
of the race as a vague intuition; and this is the form it
keeps, rude and imposing, in myth, tradition and poetry.
This is its core, its enduring aspect. In this form science
finds it, clothes it with fact, analyses its content,
develops its detail, rejects it, and finds it ever again.
In achieving the scientific view, we do not ever wholly
lose the intuitive, the mythological. Both have meaning for
us, and neither is complete without the other. The Book of
Genesis contains still our poem of the Creation; and when
God questions Job out of the whirlwind, He questions
us.

Let me cite an example. Throughout our history we have
entertained two kinds of views of the origin of life: one
that life was created supernaturally, the other that it
arose "spontaneously" from nonliving material. In the 17th
to 19th centuries those opinions provided the ground of a
great and bitter controversy. There came a curious point,
toward the end of the 18th century, when each side of the
controversy was represented by a Roman Catholic priest. The
principle opponent of the theory of the spontaneous
generation was then the Abbe Lazzaro Spallanzani, an
Italian priest; and its principal champion was John
Turberville Needham, an English Jesuit.

Since the only alternative to some form of spontaneous
generation is a belief in supernatural creation, and since
the latter view seems firmly implanted in the
Judeo-Christian theology, I wondered for a time how a
priest could support the theory of spontaneous generation.
Needham tells one plainly. The opening paragraphs of the
Book of Genesis can in fact be reconciled with either view.
In its first account of Creation, it says not quite that
God made living things, but He commanded the earth and
waters to produce them. The language used is: "let the
waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath
life.... Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after his kind." In the second version of creation the
language is different and suggests a direct creative act:
"And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of
the field, and every fowl of the air...." In both accounts
man himself--and woman--are made by God's direct
intervention. The myth itself therefore offers
justification for either view. Needham took the position
that the earth and waters, having once been ordered to
bring forth life, remained ever after free to do so; and
this is what we mean by spontaneous generation.

This great controversy ended in the mid-19th century
with the experiments of Louis Pasteur, which seemed to
dispose finally of the possibility of spontaneous
generation. For almost a century afterward biologists
proudly taught their students this history and the firm
conclusion that spontaneous generation had been
scientifically refuted and could not possibly occur. Does
this mean that they accepted the alternative view, a
supernatural creation of life? Not at all. They had no
theory of the origin of life, and if pressed were likely to
explain that questions involving such unique events as
origins and endings have no place in science.

A few years ago, however, this question re-emerged in a
new form. Conceding that spontaneous generation doe not
occur on earth under present circumstances, it asks how,
under circumstances that prevailed earlier upon this
planet, spontaneous generation did occur and was the source
of the earliest living organisms. Within the past 10 years
this has gone from a remote and patchwork argument spun by
a few venturesome persons--A. I. Oparin in Russia, J. B. S.
Haldane in England--to a favored position, proclaimed with
enthusiasm by many biologists.

Have I cited here a good instance of my thesis? I had
said that in these great questions one finds two opposed
views, each of which is periodically espoused by science.
In my example I seem to have presented a supernatural and a
naturalistic view, which were indeed opposed to each other,
but only one of which was ever defended scientifically. In
this case it would seem that science has vacillated, not
between two theories, but between one theory and no
theory.

That, however, is not the end of the matter. Our present
concept of the origin of life leads to the position that,
in a universe composed as ours is, life inevitably arises
wherever conditions permit. We look upon life as part of
the order of nature. It does not emerge immediately with
the establishment of that order; long ages must pass before
[page 100 | page 101] it appears. Yet given enough time, it
is an inevitable consequence of that order. When speaking
for myself, I do not tend to make sentences containing the
word God; but what do those persons mean who make such
sentences? They mean a great many different things; indeed
I would be happy to know what they mean much better than I
have yet been able to discover. I have asked as opportunity
offered, and intend to go on asking. What I have learned is
that many educated persons now tend to equate their concept
of God with their concept of the order of nature. This is
not a new idea; I think it is firmly grounded in the
philosophy of Spinoza. When we as scientists say then that
life originated inevitably as part of the order of our
universe, we are using different words but do not necessary
mean a different thing from what some others mean who say
that God created life. It is not only in science that great
ideas come to encompass their own negation. That is true in
religion also; and man's concept of God changes as he
changes.

I think that this extended quote shows that the "quote"
is not even correct as a paraphrase. The quote reflects
neither the words or the spirit of what Dr. Wald wrote.

- Mike Hopkins

I apologize for the length of this quote. I think it is
only fair to give Dr. Wald ample time and space for his
views to be expressed.

[The following is] transcribed directly from his paper
"The Origin of Life," which appeared in the August 1954
(pages 44-53) issue of Scientific
American.

Any mistakes of transcription are of course mine.

I am starting at the top of the center column on page
45.

One answer to the problem of how life originated is that
it was created. This is an understandable confusion of
nature with terminology. Men are used to making things; it
is a ready thought that those things not made by men were
made by a superhuman being. Most of the cultures we know
contain mythical accounts of a supernatural creation of
life. Our own tradition provides such an account in the
opening chapters of Genesis. There we are told that
beginning on the third day of the Creation, God brought
forth living creatures- first plants, then fishes and
birds, then land animals and finally man.

Spontaneous Generation

The more rational elements of society, however, tended
to take a more naturalistic view of the matter. One had
only to accept the evidence of one 's senses to know that
life arises regularly from the nonliving: worms from mud,
maggots from decaying meat, mice from refuse of various
kinds. This is the view that came to be called spontaneous
generation. Few scientists doubted it. Aristotle, Newton,
William Harvey, Descartes, van Helmont all accepted
spontaneous generation without serious inquiry. Indeed,
even the theologians- witness the English priest John
Turberville Needham- could subscribe to this view, for
Genesis tells us, not that God created plants and most
animals directly, but that he bade the earth and waters to
bring them forth; since this directive was never rescinded,
there is nothing heretical in believing that the process
has continued.

But step by step, in a great controversy that spread
over two centuries, this belief was whittled away until
nothing remained of it. First the Italian Francisco Redi
shoed in the 17th century that meat placed under a screen,
so that flies cannot lay their eggs on it, never develops
maggots. Then in the following century the Italian Abbe
Lazzaro Spallanzani showed that a nutritive broth, sealed
off from the air while boiling, never develops
microorganisms, and hence never rots. Spallanzani could
defend his broth; when he broke the seal of his flasks,
allowing new air to rush in, the broth promptly began to
rot. He could find no way, however, to show that the air
inside the flask had not been vitiated. This problem was
finally solved by Louis Pasteur in 1860, with a simple
modification of Spallanzani's experiment. Pasteur too used
a flask containing boiling broth, but instead of sealing
off the neck he drew it out in a long, S-shaped curve with
its end open to the air. While molecules of air could pass
back and forth freely, the heavier particles of dust,
bacteria, and molds in the atmosphere were trapped on the
walls of the curved neck and only rarely reached the broth.
In such a flask, the broth seldom was contaminated; usually
it remained clear and sterile indefinitely.

This was only one of Pasteur's experiments. It is no
easy matter to deal with so deeply ingrained and
common-sense a belief as that in spontaneous generation.
One can ask for nothing better in such a pass than a noisy
and stubborn opponent, and this Pasteur had in the
naturalist Felix Pouchet, whose arguments before the French
Academy of Sciences drove Pasteur to more and more rigorous
experiments.

We tell this story to beginning students in biology as
though it represented a triumph of reason over mysticism.
In fact it is very nearly the opposite. The reasonable view
was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only
alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of
supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this
reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the
belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical
necessity". It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of
our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most
modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the
downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet
unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special
creation, are left with nothing.

I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the
origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous
generation. What the controversy reviewed above showed to
be untenable is only the belief that living organisms arise
spontaneously under present conditions. We have now to face
a somewhat different problem: how organisms may have arisen
spontaneously under different conditions in some former
period, granted that they do so no longer.

Wald spends quite some time dealing with the issue of
the probability of life arising spontaneously. I again
quote Dr. Wald (p47):

With every event one can associate a probability - the
chance that it will occur. This is always a fraction, the
proportion of times an event occurs in a large number of
trials. Sometimes the probability is apparent even without
trial. A coin has two faces; the probability of tossing a
head is therefore 1/2. A die has six faces; the probability
of throwing a deuce is 1/6. When one has no means of
estimating the probability beforehand, it must be
determined by counting the fraction of successes in a large
number of trials.

Our everyday concept of what is impossible, possible, or
certain derives from our experience; the number of trials
that may be encompassed within the space of a human
lifetime, or at most within recorded human history. In this
colloquial, practical sense I concede the spontaneous
generation of life to be "impossible". It is impossible as
we judge events in the scale of human experience.

We shall see that this is not a very meaningful
concession. For one thing, the time with which our problem
is concerned is geological time, and the whole extent of
human history is trivial in the balance. We shall have more
to say of this later.

Wald then describes the difference between truly
impossible and just very unlikely. His example is a table
rising into the air. Any physicist would concede that it is
possible, if all the molecules that make up the table act
appropriately at the same time. ".but try telling one [a
physicist] that you have seen it happen."

Finally, Wald cautions us to remember that our topic
falls into a very special category. Spontaneous generation
might well be unique in that it only had to happen once.
This is the section to which I was referring in my previous
post:

The important point is that since the origin of life
belongs in the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is
on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or
any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it
will almost certainly happen at lest once. And for life as
we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction,
once may be enough.

Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with
which we have to deal is of the order of two [sic] billion
years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human
experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the
"impossible" becomes possible, the possible probable, and
the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait; time
itself performs the miracles.

As I composed this, it came to me that here was a real
authority on the spontaneous generation of life: Wald is a
Nobel Laureate, his work on photopigments is classic. This
is the perfect rebuttal to the Hoyle nonsense about
tornadoes.

Finally, I would repeat that any errors herein are mine,
except one. Dr. Wald estimated the age of the planet at two
billion years. Since 1954 we have more than doubled that
figure, based on new information. I can't help but think he
is tickled pink at that kind of mistake.

- C. Thompson

Quote #58

"All of us who study the origin of life find that the
more we look into it, the more we feel that it is too
complex to have evolved anywhere. We believe as an article
of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet.
It is just that its complexity is so great, it is hard for
us to imagine that it did." (Urey, Harold C., quoted in
Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1962, p.
4)

Here is the relevant text:

Dr. Harold C. Urey, Nobel Prize-holding chemist of the
University of California at La Jolla, explained the modern
outlook on this question by noting that "all of us who study the origin of life
find that the more we look into it, the more we feel that
it is too complex to have evolved anywhere.

And yet, he added, "We all believe
as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter
on this planet. It is just that its complexity is so great
it is hard for us to imagine that it did."

Pressed to explain what he meant by having "faith" in an
event for which he had no substantial evidence, Dr. Urey
said his faith was not in the event itself so much as in
the physical laws and reasoning that pointed to its
likelihood. He would abandon his faith if it ever proved to
be misplaced. But that is a prospect he said he considered
to be very unlikely.

I bet you are just dying to know what the question
referred to in the first sentence is, aren't you? The
preceding section was on panspermia vs abiogenesis:

This theory had been proposed before scientists knew how
readily the organic materials of life can be synthesized
from inorganic matter under the conditions thought to have
prevailed in the early days of the earth. Today, Dr. Sagan
said, it is far easier to believe that organisms arose
spontaneously on the earth than to try to account for them
in any other way.

This is a misquote, pure and simple. With the reporting
style used, you can't string together the items in the
quote marks and assume he said those things in order.

- Tracy P. Hamilton

Quote #59

"If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay
of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how has it come
into being? I think, however, that we must go further than
this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is
creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as
indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we
do not like if the experimental evidence supports it."
(H.J. Lipson, F.R.S. Professor of Physics, University of
Manchester, UK, "A physicist looks at evolution"
Physics Bulletin, 1980, vol 31, p. 138)

However, in a later issue of Physics
Bulletin, Lipson clarifies his position:

Several people have given clear indications that they do
not understand Darwin's theory. The Theory does not merely
say that species have slowly evolved: that is obvious from
the fossil record.

Note that he claims that it's obvious that
species have evolved, something that can be seen in the
fossil record.

Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #60

"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in
favor of special creation. Can you imagine how an orchid, a
duck weed, and a palm have come from the same ancestry, and
have we any evidence for this assumption? The evolutionist
must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most
would break down before an inquisition." (E.J.H. Corner
"Evolution" in A.M. MacLeod and L.S. Cobley, eds.,
Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought,
Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1961, at 95, 97 from Bird,
I, p. 234)

This is a heavily edited version of something that
Corner wrote in a chapter he contributed to
Contemporary Botanical Thought. (MacLeod, A.M.
and Cobley, L.S. (eds) 1961. Chicago: Quadrangle Books,
page 97).

In order to appreciate and understand Corner, we need
two things: 1) an understanding of who Corner was (he died
in 1996), and what was the full unedited context of the
chopped bit used by creationists.

First of all, Corner was a botanist who specialized in
tropical plants. His entire career was dedicated to the
study of tropical plants and ecology. Evolutionary theory
was to him as obvious and as natural as breathing. Consider
his remark as to the origin of seaweed:

"Living seaweeds are the modern actors of the old drama.
Two or three thousand million years ago, crowded plankton
cells were pushed against bedrock and forced to change or
die. They changed and became seaweeds."

Corner, E. J. H. 1964. The Life of
Plants.

Corner also seemed to be a man who liked to have a good
time:

He (Ahmad Abid Munir (1936 - )) remembers the rollicking
return from Britain en route to Borneo of the famous E.J.H.
Corner, the former Director of the Gardens and a global
expert on figs, fungi, seeds and just about everything
else. He is infamous for the monkeys that he trained to
climb trees and throw down herbarium material. A great
party was had. Munir describes him as "charismatic, jolly,
friendly, knowledgeable".

which placed tropical plants in the center of importance
to plant evolution. It is this last item that allows the
honest interpretation of the full and proper quote from
Contemporary Botanical Thought. [From Carl Drews: Internet
References]:

"The theory of evolution is not merely the theory of the
origin of species, but the only explanation of the fact
that organisms can be classified into this hierarchy of
natural affinity. Much evidence can be adduced in favour of
the theory of evolution - from biology, bio-geography and
palaeontology, but I still think that, to the unprejudiced, the fossil record of
plants is in favour of special creation. If, however,
another explanation could be found for this hierarchy of
classification, it would be the knell of the theory of
evolution. Can you imagine how an
orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from the same
ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The
evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think
that most would break down before an inquisition.

Textbooks hoodwink. A series of more and more
complicated plants is introduced - the alga, the fungus,
the bryophyte, and so on, and examples are added
eclectically in support of one or another theory - and that
is held to be a presentation of evolution. If the world of
plants consisted only of these few textbook types of
standard botany, the idea of evolution might never have
dawned, and the backgrounds of these textbooks are the
temperate countries which, at best, are poor places to
study world vegetation. The point, of course, is that there
are thousands and thousands of living plants, predominantly
tropical, which have never entered general botany, yet they
are the bricks with which the taxonomist has built his
temple of evolution, and where else have we to
worship?"

The first sentence, and the first part of the typically
chopped up second sentence clearly focuses us on the truth
of evolution. The second half of the second sentence (the
part most often quoted by creationists) is obviously a
criticism of the plant fossil record. And from what we know
about Corner's career, and from his next paragraph, we know
that his criticism is particularly directed at the fossil
tropical record. This is not the understanding that
professional creationists try to force on us. The second
paragraph completes Corner's criticism and makes his
meaning crystal clear: the Botanical establishment's focus
on European plants and paleontology can not provide the
answers to the (then) important issues in plant evolution.
Corner's answer is that the tropical ecologies, and
paleontology where the answers were and that textbooks and
field work should be revised accordingly.

There are two really irritating things about this abuse
of Corner's work. First, the professional creationists
waited until near Corner's death before they started to
misuse his then 35 year old book chapter, which denied him
the opportunity to defend his work. Just think about it, in
1961 not even one gene had been sequenced. Second is the
way that the professional creationists habitually
misrepresent the facts in their effort to bail out their
sinking literalist ship.

- Dr.GH

Quote #61

"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one
becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the
same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one
encounters the great mysteries of religion." (More, Louis
T., "The Dogma of Evolution," Princeton University Press:
Princeton NJ, 1925, Second Printing, p.160)

1925? Do we really have to say more?

More was apparently a professor of physics at the
University of Cincinnati. He seems to have been most famous
as a Newton biographer, and I have found reference to a
biography of Robert Boyle as well. I found a used copy of
Dogma of Evolution available for a trivial price via an
online book search. Since it was so cheap, I decided to go
ahead and order it. Perhaps I'll have an interesting update
when it arrives [See below].

- Mark VandeWettering

Some info on Dr. More from The Creationists
by Ronald Numbers [Numbers, Ronald L., The
Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific
Creationism, New York: Knoph, 1992].

On page 72:

. . . Louis T. More (1870-1944), a physicist and dean at
the University of Cincinnati who had just written a book,
The Dogma of Evolution (1925), protesting the
extension of evolution from biology to philosophy, replied
that he accepted evolution as a working hypothesis.[2] . .
.

That endnote [2] is on page 370:

. . . According to Slosson, L.T. More "admits evolution
of a sort and is equally persona non
grata to the fundamentalists as he is to the
evolutionists.". . .

Of course it does not seem to me very kosher to be
quoting a non-biologist from 1925 -- it amazes me that
anyone would have the nerve to do this. That is before the
development of the Modern Synthesis and before a great many
fossils were found.

- Mike Hopkins

I judge this one to be in context. But we still have
some problems. As has been already stated this man's field
is not relevant and he lived a long time ago. Thumbing
through the book one very quickly discovers that Dr. More
was a fan of Lamarck and believed in the inheritance of
acquired traits. Such a belief in soft inheritance was when
Dr. More wrote his book was dying and yet he clearly
thought it was the wave of the future. This is the
"authority" on the strength of his say-so the creationist
would want us to reject evolution?

Let me quote the final paragraph of chapter five on page
184:

Owing to the reverence for Darwin and the blind
submission to his views which prevailed for so many years,
it was a difficult task to live down Darwin's contempt.
Only after facts had multiplied, showing the inadequacy of
natural selection, did biologists begin timidly to take
Lamarck's doctrine seriously. If one can read the signs
aright, we may expect to have an increasing attempt to
explain the cause of evolution by the inheritance of
aquired traits. The reluctance of the biologists to accept
this doctrine does not rest so much on the lack of
experimental verification as it does on the fact that
Lamarck's cause of variation is fundamentally vitalistic in
so far as it acknowledges the influence of the will or
desire. To admit such a cause is contrary to scientific and
mechanistic monism.

This sound a lot like
Phillip Johnson and his
"intelligent design" cronies. An examination of this 1925
book might be profitable for critics of the ID movement
today.

Dr. More seems to have a poor grasp of relevant history.
He writes on page 182 that "It is well know that Lyell had
a high estimation of Lamarck's work and theory, and that it
had a great influence on him when he wrote his
Principles of Geology, . . ." Of course Lyell,
in volume II of that work, strongly argued against
Lamarck.

Quote #62

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to
admit that there is nothing in the geological records that
runs contrary to the view of conservative creationists,
that God created each species separately, presumably from
the dust of the earth." (Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose, The
Nature and Origin of the Biological World, John
Wiley & Sons, 1982, p. 164)

On the inside back cover of the book, Dr. Ambrose is
introduced as Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology,
University of London. Is he a creationist? No, he's not, as
we'll see. A more complete quote than what was provided
would be:

We need to remember that the only evidence about the way
events occurred in the past is found in the geological
records. However sophisticated advances in molecular
genetics and molecular engineering may become eventually,
the fact that a genetic change or even a new species might
be generated eventually in the laboratory does not tell us
how new species arose in the past history of the earth.
They merely provide possible mechanisms. At the present stage of geological
research, we have to admit that there is nothing in the
geological records that runs contrary to the view of
conservative creationists, that God created each species
separately, presumably from the dust of the earth. My
own view is that this does not strengthen the creationists'
arguments.

So Ambrose believes that the fossil record is
incomplete, but doesn't feel that this strengthens the
creationist's hand. But he does feel that the geological
record supports evolution, as we can see on page 103:

It is strikingly clear in the geological records, when
life had reached the stage where organisms were capable of
living in a previously unoccupied region of the planet,
such as the move from estuaries to dry land, the appearance
of plants growing to great heights which provided a
location (habitat) for climbing animals, or when birds and
insects actually moved up and flew in theair[sp] above the
earth's surface. Large numbers of new species appeared at
these times; this has been called radiation, a spreading
out of life.

And contrary to the seemingly pervasive belief that all
evolutionist are atheists, further down the page on which
the quote-mined section was on we find this:

Surely it is not unreasonable to suppose that the
Creator utilised existing life forms to generate new forms.
I have already suggested that the Creator would operate
within the framework of the universe He had created in
forming the physical world. May this not be the same for
the biological world?

It seems that Ambrose is a theistic evolutionist.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #63

"One of its (evolutions) weak points is that it does not
have any recognizable way in which conscious life could
have emerged." (Sir John Eccles, "A Divine Design: Some
Questions on Origins" in Margenau and Varghese (eds.),
Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 203)

From the preface of the book from which the below quotes
are taken:

"Cosmos, Bios, Theos makes no pretension of
being a statistically significant survey of the religious
beliefs of modern scientists. The scientists interviewed
for this anthology are, for the most part, known to be
theistic or at least sympathetic to a religious view of
reality." (xiii)

First of all, the page number is wrong; this quote
appears on p.163

Second, his 1963 Nobel was in Physiology/Medicine.

Third, he believes in a strong version of the Anthropic
principle, that the universe "was wonderfully organized and
planned to give the immensity, to give the size, to give
the opportunity for the Darwinist evolutionary process that
give rise to us." (p.162) He believes that "...brain and
body are in the evolutionary process but not yet fully
explained in this way. But the conscious self is not in the
Darwinian evolutionary process at all. I think it is a
divine creation." (p.164) It appears that he does not doubt
evolution at all, but reserves the "ensoulment of humanity"
to the work of providence.

- Hier05ant

"Scientists have to be humble. We have not said the last
word. It is the best story we have got but it has to be
amended all the time. It should be regarded not as a
doctrine but as a scientific hypothesis. We have to look at
it all the time to see its weak points and point them out
and not try to cover up the weak points. One of its weak points is that it does not
have any way in which conscious life could have
emerged, in which living organisms could become
conscious in the evolutionary process and how in the end
they could become self-conscious as we are." page 163
[sic!]

- Tom (TomS) Scharle

Quote #64

"I am convinced, moreover, that Darwinism, in whatever
form, is not in fact a scientific theory, but a
pseudo-metaphysical hypothesis decked out in scientific
garb. In reality the theory derives its support not from
empirical data or logical deductions of a scientific kind
but from the circumstance that it happens to be the only
doctrine of biological origins that can be conceived with
the constricted worldview to which a majority of scientists
no doubt subscribe." (Wolfgang, Smith, "The Universe is
Ultimately to be Explained in Terms of a Metacosmic
Reality" in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos,
Bios, Theos, p. 113)

[Note the above quote from the preface of the book,
Cosmos, Bios, Theos, regarding quote number 63.]

First, he is a Professor of Mathematics, specializing in
aerodynamics problems. (p.111)

Second, he is not an evolutionist. The sentence
immediately preceding the quoted material is "I am opposed
to Darwinism, or better said, to the transformist
hypothesis as such, no matter what one takes to be the
mechanism or cause (even perhaps teleological or theistic)
of the postulated macroevolutionary leaps." That's right
folks: he denies speciation entirely, and thinks that even
God Himself cannot account for the origin of species
(someone call the [Discovery Institute]...)

- Hier05ant

"I am opposed to Darwinism, or better said, to the
transformist hypothesis as such, no matter what one takes
to be the mechanism or cause (even perhaps teleological or
theistic) of the postulated macroevolutionary leaps. I am convinced, moreover, that Darwinism
(in whatever form) is not in fact a scientific theory, but
a pseudo-metaphysical hypothesis decked out in scientific
garb. In reality the theory derives its support not from
empirical data or logical deductions of a scientific kind
but from the circumstance that it happens to be the only
doctrine of biological origins that can be conceived within
the constrictedWeltanschauungto which a majority of scientists no doubt
subscribe."

- Tom (TomS) Scharle

Quote #65

"The origin of life is still a mystery. As long as it
has not been demonstrated by experimental realization, I
cannot conceive of any physical or chemical condition
[allowing evolution] . . . I cannot be satisfied by the
idea that fortuitous mutation . . . can explain the complex
and rational organization of the brain, but also of lungs,
heart, kidneys, and even joints and muscles. How is it
possible to escape the idea of some intelligent and
organizing force?" (d'Aubigne, Merle, "How Is It Possible
to Escape the Idea of Some Intelligent and Organizing
Force?" in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos,
Bios, Theos, p. 158)

[Note the above quote from the preface of the book,
Cosmos, Bios, Theos, regarding quote number 63.]

First, d'Aubigne is "[h]ead of the Orthopedic Department
at the University of Paris". (p.157)

The ellipses are a bloody mess, cutting across his
answers to multiple questions during the interview. The end
of the first sentence elided is ". . . where proteins could
spontaneously arrange themselves in an organism bound to
maintain itself with a continuous combination with oxygen
and to reproduce itself." In other words, he has problems
with the Tornado in a Junkyard Theory. The second elision
restored is "selected by modifications in conditions for
life". The sentence immediately following concludes. "This
problem is likely to remain a mystery."

- Hier05ant

"The origin of life is still a
mystery. As long as it has not been demonstrated by
experimental realization, I cannot conceive of any physical
or chemical conditions where proteins could
spontaneously arrange themselves in an organism bound to
maintain itself with a continuous combination with oxygen
and to reproduce itself."

. . .

"Many facts support today the neo-Darwinian doctrine of
evolution: if this theory is accepted, production of
Homo sapiens is coherent with the appearance of
mammals after progressively complex varieties of
animals.

"Personally, I cannot be satisfied
by the idea that fortuitous mutation selected by
modifications in conditions for life can explain the complex and rational
organization of the brain, but also of lungs, heart,
kidneys, and even joints and muscles. How is it possible to
escape the idea of some intelligent and organizing
force? This problem is likely to remain a
mystery."

- Tom (TomS) Scharle

Quote #66

"Life, even in bacteria, is too complex to have occurred
by chance." (Rubin, Harry, "Life, Even in Bacteria, Is Too
Complex to Have Occurred by Chance" in Margenau and
Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p.
203)

[Note the above quote from the preface of the book,
Cosmos, Bios, Theos, regarding quote number 63.]

Professor Rubin is, in fact, a molecular biologist.
(p.202)

The text immediately following reads "I believe it was
'created' in the sense that Elsasser defines creativity in
his recent book, Reflections on a Theory of
Organisms. This is not a literal interpretation of
the Bible story, in other words, it occurred perhaps
billions of years ago. Applied here, creation in Elsasser's
sense means the appearance of hereditary novelty that is
not mechanistically traceable. It accepts evolution but not
the Darwinian mechanisms such as natural selection or
gradual accumulations of changes in DNA."

- Hier05ant and Tom (TomS) Scharle

Quote #67

"The theory of evolution suffers from grave defects,
which are more and more apparent as time advances. It can
no longer square with practical scientific knowledge, nor
does it suffice for our theoretical grasp of the facts."
(Fleischmann, Albert, Victoria Institute, Vol. 65, pp.
194-195)

I know people pointed out the CRSQ
quote is an obviously creationist and not an
evolutionist source. But has anyone pointed out that Albert
Fleischmann (1862-1942) was a creationist? In 1907 it was
pointed out that he was the only biologist of "recognized
position" who was known to have rejected evolution. Those
interested in this can read Ronald Numbers excellent
The Creationists. [*] The quote-miner might consider
that the Henry Morris gave that book a good review.

- Mike Hopkins

[*] Numbers
is discussing, ironically enough, an early 20th Century
example of one of those creationist lists of scientists who
allegedly share their point of view:

The one lone biologist [on the list] was Albert
Fleischmann (1862 - 1942), a reputable but relatively
obscure German zoologist who taught for decades at the
University of Erlangen in Bavaria. In 1901 he published a
scientific critique of organic evolution, Die Descendenztheorie, in which he
rejected not only Darwinism but all theories of common
organic descent.

I haven't come across the original of this quotation,
but I've found a trail of quoters-of-quoters:

Professor Fleischmann sums up his estimate of the
Darwinian theory of the descent of man by affirming that
"it has in the realms of nature not a single fact to
confirm it. It is not the result of scientific research,
but purely the product of the imagination."

This is from an essay called "Evolutionism in the
Pulpit" "By an occupant of the pew". From "Herald and
Presbyter," November 22, 1911, Cincinnati, OH.

Reprinted as Chapter II in Volume VIII of "The
Fundamentals, A Testimony to the Truth", pages 27- 35. The
quotation is from page 29.

It, in turn, is reprinted in Volume 3 of "The
Fundamentals, A Testimony to Truth", ed. George M. Marsden,
Garland Publishing, 1988.

Not quite the quotation that you are looking for, but it
does tell us something about how much of an "evolutionist"
Fleischmann was. Perhaps I can find another trail for this
particular quotation from Fleischmann.

Mr. Haines hardly qualifies as an "evolutionist" and the
Creation Research Society Quarterly would
hardly publish an article of his if he was.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Macroevolution Questioned

Roger W. Haines, Jr., J.D.

This article is intended as a critique of the whole
doctrine of macroevolution, particularly as the doctrine is
commonly presented at schools and colleges. The well known
textbook, Physical Anthropology, by Lasker, is cited to
show how the doctrine is, in fact, presented. Citations
from many authors show that practically every assumption of
the macroevolutionary doctrine is, at best,
questionable.

It will be understood that this article is not intended
as an attack on Lasker, nor on his book. Rather, it is a
criticism of the doctrine which the author assumed in his
book.

Quote #69

"The third assumption was the Viruses, Bacteria,
Protozoa and the higher animals were all interrelated...We
have as yet no definite evidence about the way in which the
Viruses, Bacteria or Protozoa are interrelated." (Kerkut,
G.A., Implications of Evolution, Pergammon
Press, 1960, p. 151)

This is from a list of conclusions at the end of the
book. The full quote is:

The third assumption was that
Viruses, Bacteria, Protozoa and the higher animals are all
interrelated. It seems from the available evidence
that Viruses and Bacteria are complex groups both of which
contain a wide range of morphological and physiological
forms. Both groups could have been formed from diverse
sources so that the Viruses and Bacteria could then be an
assembly of forms that contain both primitive and
secondarily simplified units. They would each correspond to
a Grade rather than a Subkingdom or Phylum. We have as yet no definitive evidence
about the way in which the Viruses, Bacteria, or Protozoa
are interrelated.

We can now see that Kerkut isn't questioning evolution,
but how the "family tree" is put together. Did all Bacteria
descend from a common ancestor, or was there more than one?
In fact, the previous entry on his list questions whether
life arose only once, and he raises the possibility that
different groups of life may have had independent origins.
But Kerkut does accept the fact of evolution, and lest
there be any doubt, on page 153 we find this:

We are on somewhat stronger ground with the assumption
that the fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals are
interrelated.

And later on page 155, discussing specific and
intra-specific evolution:

It is possible that this type of evolution can explain
many of the present-day phenomena, but it is possible and
indeed probable that many as yet unknown systems remain to
be discovered and it is premature, not to say arrogant, on
our part if we make any dogmatic assertion as to the mode
of evolution of the major branches of the animal
kingdom.

Note that Kerkut states that it's dogmatic to assert as
to the mode of evolution, not the fact of
evolution. He clearly believes that evolution has
occurred.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #70

"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result
of an act of creation." (Jastrow, Robert, The
Enchanted Loom: Mind In the Universe, 1981, p.
19)

A more complete quotation of would be:

Scientists have no proof that life
was not the result of an act of creation, but they are
driven by the nature of their profession to seek
explanations for the origin of life that lie within the
boundaries of natural law. They ask themselves, "How did
life arise out of inanimate matter? And what is the
probability of that happening?" And to their chagrin they
have no clear-cut answer, because chemists have never
succeeded in reproducing nature's experiments on the
creation of life out of nonliving matter. Scientists do not
know how that happened, and, furthermore, they do not know
the chance of its happening. Perhaps the chance is very
small, and the appearance of life on a planet is an event
of miraculously low probability. Perhaps life on the earth
is unique in this Universe. No scientific evidence
precludes that possibility.

But while scientists must accept the possibility that
life may be an improbable event, they have some tentative
reasons for thinking that its appearance on earthlike
planets is, in fact, fairly commonplace. These reasons do
not constitute proof, but they are suggestive. Laboratory
experiments show that certain molecules, which are the
building blocks of living matter, are formed in great
abundance under conditions resembling those on the earth
four billion years ago, when it was a young planet.
Furthermore, those molecular building blocks of life appear
in living organisms today in just about the same relative
amounts with which they appear in the laboratory
experiments. It is as if nature, in fashioning the first
forms of life, used the ingredients at hand and in just the
proportions in which they were present.

Jastrow certainly isn't arguing in favor of
creation.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote Mine Project - Part IV (b)

Quote #71

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of
the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that
strengthened and became even more entrenched as the
synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the
history of life supports that interpretation, all the while
really knowing that it does not." (Eldredge, Niles "Time
Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the
Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New
York NY, 1985, p44)

It's actually on page 144, and here is the full quote
and context, starting on the previous page:

"And one might ask why such a distortion of the grosser
patterns of the history of life has come about. For it
truly seems to me that F. J. Taggart was right all along.
The approach to the larger themes in the history of life
taken by the modern synthesis continues the theme already
painfully apparent to Taggart in 1925: a theory of gradual,
progressive, adaptive change so thoroughly rules our minds
and imaginations that we have somehow, collectively, turned
away from some of the most basic patterns permeating the
history of life.<p144> We have a theory that -- as
punctuated equilibria tells us -- is out of phase with the
actual patterns of events that typically occur as species'
histories unfold. And that discrepancy seems enlarged by a
considerable order of magnitude when we compare what we
think the larger-scale events ought to look like
with what we actually find. And it has been paleontologists
-- my own breed -- who have been most responsible for
letting ideas dominate reality: geneticists and population
biologists, to whom we owe the modern version of natural
selection, can only rely on what paleontologists and
systematic biologists tell them about the comings and
goings of entire species, and what the large-scale
evolutionary patterns really look like.

"Yet on the other hand, the certainty so characteristic
of evolutionary ranks since the late 1940s, the utter
assurance not only that natural selection works in nature,
but that we know precisely how it works, has led
paleontologists to keep their own counsel. Ever since
Darwin, as philosopher Michael Ruse (1982) has recently
said, paleontology has occasionally played the role of the
difficult child. But our usual mien has been bland, and we have proffered a collective tacit
acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story
that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the
synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the
history of life supports that interpretation, all the while
really knowing that it does not. And part of the fault
for such a bizarre situation must come from a naive
understanding of just what adaptation is all about. We'll
look at some of the larger patterns in the history of life
in the next chapter -- along with the hypotheses currently
offered as explanations. Throughout it all, adaptation
shines through as an important theme; there is every reason
to hang on to that baby as we toss out the bathwater. But
before turning in depth to these themes, we need to take
just one more, somewhat closer, look at the actual
phenomenon of adaptation itself: what it is and how it
occurs."

So: Eldredge is agreeing that evolution occurs, and that
adaptation via natural selection is real and important. He
is saying that (as at 1985) paleontology needed to be more
explicitly about the fact that evolution is not slow and
steady, but rapid and static in turns. The snippet that is
quoted is deliberately chosen to suggest that Eldredge is
admitting some deep error in evolutionary biology; but what
he is saying is that some biologists have overlooked some
data they should factor in, and that we should not expect
that evolution will be gradual.

- John Wilkins

Quote #72

"With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that
paleontologists could have accepted gradual evolution as a
universal pattern on the basis of a handful of supposedly
well-documented lineages (e.g. Gryphaea, Micraster,
Zaphrentis) none of which actually withstands close
scrutiny." (Paul, C. R. C., 1989, "Patterns of Evolution
and Extinction in Invertebrates", Allen, K. C. and Briggs,
D. E. G. (editors), Evolution and the Fossil
Record, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington,
D. C., 1989, p. 105)

Once again we find that the passage quoted isn't a
criticism of evolution, but of gradualism.

The most significant contributions of Eldredge and
Gould's theory are the acceptance of patterns as preserved
in the fossil record, and the recognition of stasis (Lewin
1986). Hitherto, no morphological change had been equated
with no data, and just ignored. With
the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing that
palaeontologists could have accepted gradual evolution as a
universal pattern on the basis of a handful of supposedly
well-documented lineages (e.g. Gryphaea,
Micraster, Zaphrentis) none of which actually
withstands close scrutiny. (For example
Micraster shows sudden appearances of new taxa
(Stokes 1977, Figure 2) and relatively sudden changes in
morphological features (Drummond 1983, figure 1).) The
evidence that the vast majority of species appeared equally
suddenly, had well-defined periods of existence, and then
disappeared equally suddenly, was just ignored.
Furthermore, because evolution was known to be gradual,
very few palaeontologists documented actual patterns
preserved in the fossil record. Eldredge and Gould (1972)
did a great service in prompting a re-examination of the
evidence.

Determining why the fossil oyster Gryphaea
evolved the way it did is a classic riddle that has
befuddled scientists since the publication of a provocative
paper by paleontologist Edward Trueman in 1922. One of the
best documented cases of evolution in the fossil record,
the paper showed how the oyster changed from being as small
as a penny and flat to larger and coiled, Jones said.

Micraster is a type of sea urchin. See the
following pages for more info:

The ironic thing is that Gryphaea,
Micraster, and Zaphrentis would probably be
recognized as three different "kinds" by a creationist, who
would then claim that the sudden changes in morphological
features observed by Paul are just variations with their
respective "kinds".

But does Paul feel that evolution has been discredited?
At the end of the paper on page 119 we find this:

Indeed, the real merit of all three major ideas
discussed in this chapter (see p. 99) has been their
stimulus to detailed collecting and documentation of the
patterns preserved in the fossil record. Even if all three
should eventually be rejected, they will have advanced the
state of knowledge of the fossil record and rendered
invaluable service to palaeontology and evolutionary
science in general.

Evolutionary science hasn't been harmed, but rendered an
"invaluable service". These are not the words of an
opponent of evolution.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #73

"The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the
higher plants within recent geological times is an
abominable mystery." (Darwin, Charles R., letter to J.D.
Hooker, July 22nd 1879, in Darwin F. & Seward A.C.,
eds., "More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work
in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Papers," John Murray:
London, 1903, Vol. II, pp. 20-21)

The letter is reproduced entirely below, from Project
Gutenberg's online copy of More
Letters:

LETTER 395. TO J.D. HOOKER.

Down, July 22nd [1879].

I have just read Ball's Essay.* It is pretty bold. The rapid development as far as we can
judge of all the higher plants within recent geological
times is an abominable mystery. Certainly it would be
a great step if we could believe that the higher plants at
first could live only at a high level; but until it is
experimentally [proved] that Cycadeae, ferns, etc., can
withstand much more carbonic acid than the higher plants,
the hypothesis seems to me far too rash. Saporta believes
that there was an astonishingly rapid development of the
high plants, as soon [as] flower-frequenting insects were
developed and favoured intercrossing. I should like to see
this whole problem solved. I have fancied that perhaps
there was during long ages a small isolated continent in
the S. Hemisphere which served as the birthplace of the
higher plants--but this is a wretchedly poor conjecture. It
is odd that Ball does not allude to the obvious fact that
there must have been alpine plants before the Glacial
period, many of which would have returned to the mountains
after the Glacial period, when the climate again became
warm. I always accounted to myself in this manner for the
gentians, etc.

Ball ought also to have considered the alpine insects
common to the Arctic regions. I do not know how it may be
with you, but my faith in the glacial migration is not at
all shaken.

[Footnote from More Letters]

* The late John Ball's lecture "On the Origin of the
Flora of the Alps" in the "Proceedings of the R. Geogr.
Soc." 1879. Ball argues (page 18) that "during ancient
Palaeozoic times, before the deposition of the
Coal-measures, the atmosphere contained twenty times as
much carbonic acid gas and considerably less oxygen than it
does at present." He further assumes that in such an
atmosphere the percentage of CO2 in the higher
mountains would be excessively different from that at the
sea-level, and appends the result of calculations which
gives the amount of CO2 at the sea-level as 100
per 10,000 by weight, at a height of 10,000 feet as 12.5
per 10,000. Darwin understands him to mean that the
Vascular Cryptogams and Gymnosperms could stand the
sea-level atmosphere, whereas the Angiosperms would only be
able to exist in the higher regions where the percentage of
CO2 was small. It is not clear to us that Ball
relies so largely on the condition of the atmosphere as
regards CO2. If he does he is clearly in error,
for everything we know of assimilation points to the
conclusion that 100 per 10,000 (1 per cent.) is by no means
a hurtful amount of CO2, and that it would lead
to an especially vigorous assimilation. Mountain plants
would be more likely to descend to the plains to share in
the rich feast than ascend to higher regions to avoid it.
Ball draws attention to the imperfection of our plant
records as regards the floras of mountain regions. It is,
he thinks, conceivable that there existed a vegetation on
the Carboniferous mountains of which no traces have been
preserved in the rocks. See "Fossil Plants as Tests of
Climate," page 40, A.C. Seward, 1892.

Since the first part of this note was written, a paper
has been read (May 29th, 1902) by Dr. H.T. Brown and Mr. F.
Escombe, before the Royal Society on "The Influence of
varying amounts of Carbon Dioxide in the Air on the
Photosynthetic Process of Leaves, and on the Mode of Growth
of Plants." The author's experiments included the
cultivation of several dicotyledonous plants in an
atmosphere containing in one case 180 to 200 times the
normal amount of CO2, and in another between
three and four times the normal amount. The general results
were practically identical in the two sets of experiments.
"All the species of flowering plants, which have been the
subject of experiment, appear to be accurately 'tuned' to
an atmospheric environment of three parts of CO2 per
10,000, and the response which they make to slight
increases in this amount are in a direction altogether
unfavourable to their growth and reproduction." The
assimilation of carbon increases with the increase in the
partial pressure of the CO2. But there seems to
be a disturbance in metabolism, and the plants fail to take
advantage of the increased supply of CO2. The
authors say: -- "All we are justified in concluding is,
that if such atmospheric variations have occurred since the
advent of flowering plants, they must have taken place so
slowly as never to outrun the possible adaptation of the
plants to their changing conditions."

Prof. Farmer and Mr. S.E. Chandler gave an account, at
the same meeting of the Royal Society, of their work "On
the Influence of an Excess of Carbon Dioxide in the Air on
the Form and Internal Structure of Plants." The results
obtained were described as differing in a remarkable way
from those previously recorded by Teodoresco ("Rev. Gen.
Botanique," II., 1899)

It is hoped that Dr. Horace Brown and Mr. Escombe will
extend their experiments to Vascular Cryptogams, and thus
obtain evidence bearing more directly upon the question of
an increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of
the Coal-period forests.)

The quote seems accurate as far as it goes, but it is
hardly damning to the theory of evolution that Darwin did
not (indeed, could not, given the evidence known in his
time) have a theory that described the evolution of plants.
It was written in 1879 after all.

- Mark VandeWettering

[Commenting on above]

Of course, the quote miners want people to make a
conclusion from this that is nothing more than an appeal to
(Darwin's) ignorance. It is also extremely out-of-date. Of
course the creationist quote omits potential solutions. But
as quotes go, I will not call this creationist quote
dishonest. Google
shows mainstream science sites using the quote as well, like
Origin of
the Angiosperms.

- Mike Hopkins

. . . The basic premise is no longer valid: "higher"
plants no longer are so isolated in recent geological
times. There is a long fossil history of plants in which
they become less and less modern in aspect the further back
one looks.

. . . [I]n 1879 Darwin's basic ideas were still
controversial and being debated in the scientific community
(as is right and proper for any new theory). This letter is
simply part of that debate - one in which Darwin admits to
not knowing one particular answer.

- Stanley Friesen

Quote #74

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available
to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin
of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle."
(Francis Crick, Life Itself, Its Origin and
Nature, 1981, p. 88)

Again there is an unmarked deletion, this time at the
end, following right after "miracle,":

" . . . so many are the conditions which would have had
to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not
be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe
that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly
reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions.
The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the
many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse,
the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own
knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able
to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened
such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental
evidence from that era to check our ideas against."

Crick's book is about his proposition that life on Earth
may have been the result of "directed panspermia."
It should be noted that, in the book, he assumes that the
aliens who he posits might be "seeding" the universe are,
themselves, the product of evolution. In this quote, Crick
is simply pointing out how, in the absence of evidence, the
appearance of life on Earth might seem like a
miracle. But he specifically admits that abiogenesis
may have occurred on Earth as a result of ordinary chemical
processes that require no resort to outside intelligence.
Leaving out that part of it, by cutting off what
immediately follows, is deeply dishonest.

- J. (catshark) Pieret

Quote #75

"The number of intermediate varieties, which have
formerly existed must be truly enormous. Why then is not
every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any
such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is
the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged
against the theory." (Darwin, Charles, Origin of
Species, 6th edition, 1902 p. 341-342)

But just in proportion as this process of extermination
has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties,
which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is
not every geological formation and every stratum full of
such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal
any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps,
is the most obvious and serious objection which can be
urged against my theory. The
explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection
of the geological record.

In the first place, it should always be borne in mind
what sort of intermediate forms must, on the theory, have
formerly existed. I have found it difficult, when looking
at any two species, to avoid picturing to myself forms
DIRECTLY intermediate between them. But this is a wholly
false view; we should always look for forms intermediate
between each species and a common but unknown progenitor;
and the progenitor will generally have differed in some
respects from all its modified descendants. To give a
simple illustration: the fantail and pouter pigeons are
both descended from the rock-pigeon; if we possessed all
the intermediate varieties which have ever existed, we
should have an extremely close series between both and the
rock-pigeon; but we should have no varieties directly
intermediate between the fantail and pouter; none, for
instance, combining a tail somewhat expanded with a crop
somewhat enlarged, the characteristic features of these two
breeds. These two breeds, moreover, have become so much
modified, that, if we had no historical or indirect
evidence regarding their origin, it would not have been
possible to have determined from a mere comparison of their
structure with that of the rock-pigeon, C. livia, whether
they had descended from this species or from some other
allied species, such as C. oenas.

So with natural species, if we look to forms very
distinct, for instance to the horse and tapir, we have no
reason to suppose that links directly intermediate between
them ever existed, but between each and an unknown common
parent. The common parent will have had in its whole
organisation much general resemblance to the tapir and to
the horse; but in some points of structure may have
differed considerably from both, even perhaps more than
they differ from each other. Hence, in all such cases, we
should be unable to recognise the parent-form of any two or
more species, even if we closely compared the structure of
the parent with that of its modified descendants, unless at
the same time we had a nearly perfect chain of the
intermediate links.

The Quote Miner only quotes the question, not the answer
that follows, in which Darwin states his belief that the
geological record is incomplete, and then outlines which
transitional forms he would expect to find if they're found
at all.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #76

"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have
asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a
fantasy." (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters,
1887, Vol. 2, p. 229)

I looked at volume 2 of Life and Letters,
but cannot find anything remotely similar to that quote in
the pages in that vicinity.

You seemed to have worked admirably on the species
question; there could not have been a better plan than
reading up on the opposite side. I rejoice profoundly that
you intend admitting the doctrine of modification in your
new edition;* nothing, I am convinced, could be more
important for its success. I honour you most sincerely. To
have maintained in the position of a master, one [Page 25]
side of a question for thirty years, and then deliberately
give it up, is a fact to which I much doubt whether the
records of science offer a parallel. For myself, also, I
rejoice profoundly; for, thinking of so many cases of men
pursuing an illusion for years, often and often a cold shudder has run through me,
and I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my
life to a phantasy. Now I look at it as morally
impossible that investigators of truth, like you and
Hooker, can be wholly wrong, and therefore I rest in peace.
Thank you for criticisms, which, if there be a second
edition, I will attend to. I have been thinking that if I
am much execrated as an atheist, etc., whether the
admission of the doctrine of natural selection could injure
your works; but I hope and think not, for as far as I can
remember, the virulence of bigotry is expended on the first
offender, and those who adopt his views are only pitied as
deluded, by the wise and cheerful bigots.

I cannot help thinking that you overrate the importance
of the multiple origin of dogs. The only difference is,
that in the case of single origins, all difference of the
races has originated since man domesticated the species. In
the case of multiple origins part of the difference was
produced under natural conditions. I should infinitely
prefer the theory of single origin in all cases, if facts
would permit its reception. But there seems to me some
à priori improbability (seeing how fond savages are
of taming animals), that throughout all times, and
throughout all the world, that man should have domesticated
one single species alone, of the widely distributed genus
Canis. Besides this, the close resemblance of at least
three kinds of American domestic dogs to wild species still
inhabiting the countries where they are now domesticated,
seem to almost compel admission that more than one wild
Canis has been domesticated by man. [Page 26] I thank you
cordially for all the generous zeal and interest you have
shown about my book, and I remain, my dear Lyell,

Your affectionate friend and disciple,

CHARLES DARWIN.

Sir J. Herschel, to whom I sent a copy, is going to read
my book. He says he leans to the side opposed to me. If you
should meet him after he has read me, pray find out what he
thinks, for, of course, he will not write; and I should
excessively like to hear whether I produce any effect on
such a mind.

[footnote]

*It appears from Sir Charles Lyell's published letters
that he intended to admit the doctrine of evolution in a
new edition of the 'Manual,' but this was not published
till 1865. He was, however, at work on the 'Antiquity of
Man' in 1860, and had already determined to discuss the
'Origin' at the end of the book.

So, once again we see Darwin's modesty (and Victorian
style) being used by a crasser age to make it look as if
Darwin harbored real doubts about his theory when, in fact,
he held it would be "morally impossible" for it to be
wrong, especially since it had passed the test of
convincing such men as Lyell and Hooker.

His prescience concerning his fate at the hands of
bigots is also notable.

- Mike Dunford and J. (catshark) Pieret

This is the worst of the misquotes uncovered by this
project in my humble opinion. I hereby award this misquote
the Keith Davies Award for Extreme Misquoting. (Keith
Davies being the guy who quoted some astronomers having
saying there was a mystery and clipped the end of the
sentence that said "is also solved." See either the Supernova
or the Quotes
FAQs.)

I notice the creationist quote it as a word as "fantasy"
and the letter quoted has "phantasy." I guess one of the
quote miners must have assumed the quote mine he was
copying from had a typo without checking the original. Lets
see what Google gives
when we use "phantasy" spelling is used:

Ten days before the proofs were bound he wrote to his
friend J.D. Hooker, 'I have been very bad lately; having
had an awful "crisis" one leg swelled like elephantiasis --
eyes almost closed up -- covered with a rash & fiery
Boils: but they tell me it will surely do me much good. --
it was like living in Hell.'16, 17 His modern
biographers talk of his 'self-doubt, his nagging, gnawing
fear that "I...have devoted my life to a
phantasy."'18

Darwin passed the rest of his life in a semi - invalid
condition, the exact cause of which, whether organic or
psychological is not well known. He had reservations and
doubts about his theory and in his writings there are lines
of defence, in case it was proved as erroneous. "Many times
I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life
to a fantasy. I am ready to cry in despair at my blindness
and my presumption" (From ape to man page 23
Wendt, Herbert NY 1972).

'A ghastly fifteen months was capped on 1 October, when
Charles finished the proofs amid fits of vomiting. During
that whole time he had rarely been able to write free of
stomach pains for more than twenty minutes at a stretch.
The next day, in torrential rain, he took himself off to
Ilkley . . . bracing himself against the elements, Darwin
felt a cold shudder surge through him once more. The
howling wind was as nothing to the storm of self-doubt, his
nagging, gnawing fear that 'I have devoted my life to a
fantasy' and a dangerous one...' God knows what the public
will think.' [Desmond & Moore, p.476-7]

Someone might check to see if that cited biography of
Darwin is partially at fault.

[No it's not. But it is at fault in giving the
impression - particularly in that passage - that Darwin's
doubts about evolution was the cause for his ailments and
troubles. They present Darwin as betraying his class
allegiances in taking a radical stance over evolution,
which had been previously a view of social radicals and
revolutionaries. I think, and so do many others, that this
is bunk. So far as I can tell, he never doubted the truth
or value of the evolutionary hypothesis once he had come up
with it in October 1838.

Note that "cold shudder" is quoted in the
D&M
passage, since it comes also verbatim from the same letter.
- John Wilkins]

In the fifth place, even the father of evolution,
Charles Darwin, had serious doubts about his own theory.
Shortly after Darwin published his infamous book on the
origin of species, he wrote in a letter to Charles Lyell:
"I have asked myself whether I may not have devoted my life
to a fantasy."13 In another statement in the
same letter Darwin wrote: "I am the most miserable,
bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am ready to cry
with vexation at my blindness and
presumption."14 If the father of evolutionary
thought stated that his own theory was formulated by
"blindness and presumption," how could anyone argue that he
employed good scientific means in arriving at his
conclusions. He did not even believe it himself!

This is the worst of all. Darwin did not believe his
theory himself!?! In any event, notice the claim that the
vexation quote comes from the same letter which is
false.

. . . I write now to supplicate most earnestly a favour,
viz., the loan of Boreau, Flore du centre de la France,
either 1st or 2nd edition, last best; also "Flora
Ratisbonensis," by Dr. Fürnrohr, in 'Naturhist.
Topographie von Regensburg, 1839.' If you can possibly
spare them, will you send them at once to the enclosed
address. If you have not them, will you send one line by
return of post: as I must try whether Kippist* can anyhow
find them, which I fear will be nearly impossible in the
Linnean Library, in which I know they are.

I have been making some calculations about varieties,
etc., and talking yesterday with Lubbock, he has pointed
out to me the grossest blunder which I have made in
principle, and which entails two or three weeks' lost work;
and I am at a dead-lock till I have these books to go over
again, and see what the result of calculation on the right
principle is. I am the most miserable,
bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am ready to cry
with vexation at my blindness and presumption.

Ever yours, most miserably,

C. DARWIN.

[Ellipsis put there by Francis Darwin.]

[footnote]

*The late Mr. Kippist was at this time in charge of the
Linnean Society's Library.]

Another flagrant out-of-context quote. Maybe it is not
in this list but since it so commonly associated with the
quote-miner's list, it might be a good idea add it to the
compilation.

- Mike Hopkins

Quote #77

"The geological record has provided no evidence as to
the origin of the fishes." (Norman, J., A History of
Fishes, 1963, p. 298)

This book is out of print, the latest versions printed
in 1976. The original was printed in 1949! Needless to say
there have been quite a few discoveries regarding the
origin of fish since 1949.

The 1949 version must have been a reprint also, as
Norman died of endocarditis in 1944. Any statements about
the geological record before 1944 would now be very much
out of date.

- Dana Tweedy

Quote #78

"None of the known fishes is thought to be directly
ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates." (Stahl, B.,
Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution,
Dover Publications, Inc., NY, 1985, p. 148)

This is a Dover paperback reprint of a 1974 text book.
According to Amazon.com it's out of print. It's not longer
available through Dover Publications . . .

Dr Barbra J. Stahl is a profession of biology at St.
Anselem University in Manchester NH, a small Catholic
University. She is quoted in quite a few creationist quote
mines. Her book is apparently a favorite of Phil Johnson,
and the quote above is most probably cribbed from Johnson's
"Darwin on Trial". Interestingly enough, nearly all quote
mines cite the 1985 Dover reprint, rather than the 1974
original printing by McGraw Hill.

There have been quite a few discoveries since 1974
relating to fish/amphibian transitionals, which leaves Dr
Stahl's book more than a little out of date.

- Dana Tweedy

"Although the relationship of the rhipidistians to the
amphibians will be discussed in greater detail in the next
chapter, it should be said here that none of the known fishes is thought to be
directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates.
Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and
those that came before showed no evidence of developing the
stout limbs and ribs that characterize the primitive
tetrapods. While paleontologists hope to find remains of
the rhipidistian line in which these structures evolved,
they have no intention of neglecting the history of the
other members of the group."

The next chapter, pg. 194:

"Despite the importance that terrestrial vertebrates
were to have, however, their initial evolution was not in
any way unusual or spectacular. The amphibians were not the
last survivors of a lesser class but one of a number of new
forms produced as the early bony fishes diversified rapidly
in the Devonian period. At their first appearance, they
gave the impression less of a revolutionary new group than
of fishes peculiarly adapted for special habits of life.
Outwardly, except for their legs, they resembled the
rhipidistian fishes from which they sprang. Very likely,
they continued to swim in the shallows, as their
sharp-toothed forebears had, preying on the abundant
placoderms and early paleoniscooids to be found there.
Paleontologists are quite certain of the relationship
between the rhipidistians and the amphibians even though
they have not discovered the animals intermediate between
the finned and limbed forms. The remains of the oldest
tetrapods in their collections leave no doubt about the
derivation of the axial skeleton from fishes of the
rhipidistian group."

Quote #79

"The pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are
trying to prove evolution, which no scientist can ever
prove." (Millikan, Robert A., Nashville
Banner, August 7, 1925, quoted in Brewer's
lecture)

In short the reason why creation is incredible is that
it is contrary to the observable facts.

- Mike Hopkins

Quote #81

"Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it
only because the only alternative is special creation which
is unthinkable." (Keith, Arthur, forward to 100th
anniversary edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of
Species, 1959)

The quote that is attributed to Sir Arthur Keith is a
figment of the creationists imagination. I researched that
quote a month or two ago and could not find a trace of it.
No library in the Atlanta metro area has this particular
edition and neither Amazon nor Barnes and Noble has this
edition. I am in nine newsgroups and no one in these NGs
had a copy or had ever seen one. A search of the internet
showed many references for this quote but every one of them
was from a creationist site. It is also amazing because
that Sir Arthur died in 1955 and the 100th anniversary
edition would not have been issued until 1959. Tell me, did
"God" write this for Sir Arthur from heaven?

- Tom

As Tom points out this quote is indeed a figment of the
creationists' imagination.

However, Sir Arthur Keith did indeed write an
introduction to the Origin of Species
(Keith, 1928),
although he did so over 30 years before any
centennial edition would have been printed. And considering
that Keith died in 1955, he wouldn't have been in a
position to write one had he wanted to. Did Keith write
another introduction later in his life? This is doubtful as
well, since the author of a later introduction to the
Origin, W. R. Thompson, states right at the
beginning of his own effort:

When I was asked by the publishers of this new edition
of The Origin of Species to write an introduction replacing
the one prepared a quarter of a century ago by the
distinguished Darwinian, Sir Arthur Keith, I felt extremely
hesitant to accept the invitation.
(Thompson 1958)

And why should each of the islands have its own peculiar
creations? Special creation could not explain such
things.

We see that Keith doesn't believe that that special
creation is an alternative at all, since he doesn't feel
that it can explain the fauna of the Galapagos. And later
on he writes:

The Origin of Species is still the book
which contains the most complete demonstration that the law
of evolution is true.

It's obvious that Keith believes in evolution not
because he doesn't like the alternatives, but because he
believes evolution to be true.

REFERENCES

Keith, Arthur.
Introduction to "The origin of species by
means of natural selection", by Charles Darwin. London:
J.M. Dent, 1928.

Thompson, William Robin. Introduction to "The origin of
species", by Charles Darwin. London: J.M. Dent, 1958.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #82

"Not one change of species into another is on
record...we cannot prove that a single species has been
changed." Charles Darwin, My Life &
Letters

Charles Darwin never wrote any book by that title.

It's commonly misquoted on many a creationist site.

His son edited, after his father's death, a book called
The life and letters of Charles Darwin.

In which you can track down the second half of the
"quote" above, but without any trace of the first half.

Many of Darwin's books (including The Life and
Letters of Charles Darwin) are available via Project
Gutenberg. I tracked this down and reported what I found in
Re: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.

- Mike Hopkins and Mark VandeWettering

Quote #83

"The geological record is extremely imperfect and this
fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find
interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct
and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps.
He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological
record, will rightly reject my whole theory. For he may ask
in vain where are the numberless transitional (missing)
links which must formerly have connected the closely allied
or representative." Charles Darwin, The Origin of
Species

This is from the near the end of chapter 10 of the
1st edition (funny how no edition number is given with the
quote).

I have attempted to show that the geological record is
extremely imperfect; that only a small portion of the globe
has been geologically explored with care; that only certain
classes of organic beings have been largely preserved in a
fossil state; that the number both of specimens and of
species, preserved in our museums, is absolutely as nothing
compared with the incalculable number of generations which
must have passed away even during a single formation; that,
owing to subsidence being necessary for the accumulation of
fossiliferous deposits thick enough to resist future
degradation, enormous intervals of time have elapsed
between the successive formations; that there has probably
been more extinction during the periods of subsidence, and
more variation during the periods of elevation, and during
the latter the record will have been least perfectly kept;
that each single formation has not been continuously
deposited; that the duration of each formation is, perhaps,
short compared with the average duration of specific forms;
that migration has played an important part in the first
appearance of new forms in any one area and formation; that
widely ranging species are those which have varied most,
and have oftenest given rise to new species; and that
varieties have at first often been local. All these causes
taken conjointly, must have tended to make the geological record extremely imperfect,
and will to a large extent explain why we do not find
interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct
and existing forms of life by the finest graduated
steps.

He who rejects these views on the
nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my
whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the
numberless transitional links which must formerly have
connected the closely allied or representative species,
found in the several stages of the same great
formation. He may disbelieve in the enormous intervals
of time which have elapsed between our consecutive
formations; he may overlook how important a part migration
must have played, when the formations of any one great
region alone, as that of Europe, are considered; he may
urge the apparent, but often falsely apparent, sudden
coming in of whole groups of species. He may ask where are
the remains of those infinitely numerous organisms which
must have existed long before the first bed of the Silurian
system was deposited: I can answer this latter question
only hypothetically, by saying that as far as we can see,
where our oceans now extend they have for an enormous
period extended, and where our oscillating continents now
stand they have stood ever since the Silurian epoch; but
that long before that period, the world may have presented
a wholly different aspect; and that the older continents,
formed of formations older than any known to us, may now
all be in a metamorphosed condition, or may lie buried
under the ocean.

Passing from these difficulties, all the other great
leading facts in palaeontology seem to me simply to follow
on the theory of descent with modification through natural
selection.

Note that while Darwin does admit that "He who rejects
these views on the nature of the geological record, will
rightly reject my whole theory", he reiterates several
reason why these views should be accepted, reasons he feels
are quite legitimate, but that are left out by the Quote
Miner. Darwin feels that the geological record is
consistent with evolution, and that his theory can only be
rejected on geological grounds if his views of geology,
which at that time were fairly orthodox, are rejected as
well.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #84

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ
existed, which could not possibly have been formed by
numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would
absolutely break down." Charles Darwin, The Origin of
the Species

If it could be demonstrated that
any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,
my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find
out no such case.

Darwin didn't feel there was an organ that could not
have evolved, and there is no reason to think otherwise
today.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #85

"If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or
families, have really started into life all at once, that
fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow
modification through natural selection." Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species

If numerous species, belonging to
the same genera or families, have really started into life
all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of
descent with slow modification through natural
selection. For the development of a group of forms,
all of which have descended from some one progenitor, must
have been an extremely slow process; and the progenitors
must have lived long ages before their modified
descendants. But we continually over-rate the perfection of
the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain
genera or families have not been found beneath a certain
stage, that they did not exist before that stage. We
continually forget how large the world is, compared with
the area over which our geological formations have been
carefully examined; we forget that groups of species may
elsewhere have long existed and have slowly multiplied
before they invaded the ancient archipelagoes of Europe and
of the United States. We do not make due allowance for the
enormous intervals of time, which have probably elapsed
between our consecutive formations, longer perhaps in some
cases than the time required for the accumulation of each
formation. These intervals will have given time for the
multiplication of species from some one or some few
parent-forms; and in the succeeding formation such species
will appear as if suddenly created.

And once again, Darwin gives explanations he feels are
quite legitimate, and in fact the whole chapter, as well as
the following one, is devoted to explaining his reasoning
on the subject. Is there reason to think that several
species of the same family have started all at once?

What all of the above quotes have done is taken
advantage of Darwin's style of writing to cast doubt on his
belief in his own theory. But rather than try to understand
the concept, and argue against it, Quote Miners mindlessly
repeat particular words.

- Jon (gen2rev) Barber

Quote #86

[And the quote from the Anointed One site left out by
the poster]

"Whatever ideas authorities may have on the subject, the
lungfishes, like every other major group of fishes that I
know, have their origins firmly based in nothing." (Quoted
in W. R. Bird, The Origin of Species Revisited
[Nashville: Regency, 1991; originally published by
Philosophical Library, 1987], 1:62-63)

It is evident that the separation between the
lung-fishes and the other two groups, the rhipidistians and
the coelacanths is such as to warrant placing them in a
Sub-class separate from the Crossopterygii (e. g. Berg,
1940). How far they are separated we do not yet know, for
like all the other groups of fishes their origins are
masked in obscurity. There are those who see in their
dentition, so unlike that of all other living fishes except
the chimaeroids, relationships with that group and, through
the chimaeroids, connection with the extinct arthrodires,
to the similarity of whose dentition we have just drawn
attention; and it was next to the arthrodires that Smith
Woodward placed them many years ago (1891:234) and so
perhaps back to the elasmobranchs, to which Agassiz
(1838:129) at first referred the teeth of Ceratodus.
But whatever ideas authorities may
have on the subject, the lung-fishes, like every other
major group of fishes that I know, have their origins
firmly based in nothing, a matter of hot
dispute among the experts, each of whom is firmly convinced
that everyone else is wrong.

Obviously White believes that evolution occurred, and
even outlines several possible lines of descent. Later on
the same page he writes:

What we do know for certain is from the
evidence of geology, which tells us that the remains of
organic beings from the oldest rocks to the latest form a
succession, greatly imperfect, in which the overall picture
is that of creatures, both animals and plant, of
increasingly modern aspect.